SHOULD A MAJOR
PARTY CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, WHO HAS PLEDGED HIS SUPPORT FOR OUR TROOPS, REJECT
THE MONEY AND SUPPORT of an anti-American extremist who thinks Osama bin Laden
had a “valid” argument on 9/11 and says she is currently acting “to undermine
the war effort”? Barack Obama should be forced to make that decision about the ample
funds he has received
from Code
Pink co-founder Jodie
Evans.

According
to Ralph
Nader’s Public
Citizen, Evans has “raised at
least $50,000” for the Obama campaign. As long ago as February 2007, the
Code Pink co-founder and pampered divorcee co-hosted
a Hollywood fundraiser for Obama with her ex-husband (financier Max Palevsky)
and Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen of DreamWorks
studios. [1]

Rare Candor (Read:
Undisguised Hatred) from the Left

Evans capped off
a lifetime of yeoman service to the leftist fringe this June 3, when she told Kansas
talk show host Paul A. Ibbetson al-Qaeda may have had a point on 9/11. On
Ibbetson’s “Conscience of Kansas” radio program, Evans declared:

Evans: We
were attacked because we were in Saudi Arabia. That was the message of Osama,
was that, because we had our bases in the Middle East, he attacked the United
States.

Ibbetson: Do
you think that’s a valid argument?

Evans:Sure.
Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that,
that country. Why do we get to have bases in the Middle East? [2]

The Code Pinko
revealed, with unusually cold-blooded frankness, the reason Code Pink targeted
military recruiters – and U.S. soldiers:

Ibbetson: I understand
the activism and the protesting of George W. Bush and Cheney…What is this
protesting and work against the military recruitment…in Berkeley?

Evans: As an antiwar
activist, one of the things you try to do is you try to find the pillars that
keep us at war and try to undermine those pillars. And one of the things: You can’t
go to war if you don’t have soldiers.

When pressed to
clarify the “pillars” her deeds “undermined,” the Obama bundler removed all
doubt she aimed at our uniformed men and women themselves:

Ibbetson: You said you
want to undermine the pillars of the war effort, and part of those pillars of
that effort is the military, complex
or whatever. Would you –

Evans: Well, the soldiers
that fight the war. If you don’t have soldiers, you won’t be at war.

She didn’t sound
very convincing in denying, “Code Pink sees the military as the enemy.” (“N-n-n-n-no,” she eventually stammered out.) She
then likened Military Recruiting Centers to “liquor stores and porn shops.”

Finally, Evans
affirmed of Code Pink’s travels to Iraq: “You’re right! We were trying to undermine
the war effort!”

More Than Words

Evans’ revealing
performance could serve as light radio comedy – (e.g., she later blurted out, in
earnest, “Why is being a Communist anti-American?”) – if it did not mask a long
history of actions designed to demoralize soldiers in harm’s way, vilify the
military (and the United States as a whole), provide monetary and military
support to jihadists,and popularize the views of Islamic
radicals who believe terrorists who kill U.S. troops are “guaranteed Paradise.”

Her statement
that “you can’t go to war if you don’t have any soldiers,” dovetails with her
work to break the morale of soldiers fighting in Iraq. In
July 2003, Jodie Evans joinedthe Advisory Board of Iraq
Occupation Watch (IOW) as a founding member. Castroites
Medea Benjamin and Leslie
Cagan established IOW in Baghdad to convince American soldiers serving in Iraq to obtain
“conscientious objector” status and get sent home. As part of this
process, they recycled anti-American news stories to the troops in Iraq, and
spread “first-hand” accounts of mythical U.S. “atrocities” back home. At least
one fellow Advisory Board member called
for the murder of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Tiring
of rhetoric, Code Pink tended to the material needs of those who killed U.S.
troops or tended to the “insurgents.” In December 2004, Evans and Code Pink delivered $600,000 in cash and supplies to “the
other side” in Fallujah, a recent battlefield and terrorist
stronghold infamous for killing American soldiers.

That
summer, Evans disclosed,
in blunt fashion, that she had little concern over troops being killed, because
she viewed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death squads as our moral superiors:

We must begin
by really standing with the Iraqi people and defending their right to resist. I
can remain myself against all forms of violence, and yet I cannot judge what
someone has to do when pushed to the wall to protect all they love. The Iraqi
people are fighting for their country, to protect their families and to
preserve all they love. They are fighting for their lives, and we are fighting
for lies. [3]

Before
long, she and Code Pink would seek to join forces with the terrorists’ leaders
once again. In August 2006, she
joined 11 other far-leftists in a Code
Pink-sponsored trip to meet Iraqi “political leaders” such as:

Code
Pink announced after this trip, “We left this historic meeting with a
commitment to make sure that the voices of these Iraqi parliamentarians are
heard here in the U.S.” Indeed, one delegation member, a DailyKos blogger who
ran for Congress in 2006, blogged, “if justice is to ever come to
the people of Iraq, the people we call insurgents will have to be recognized as
the ones who are actually defending their homeland.” As I noted at the
time, Medea Benjamin laid out her full plan to coordinate anti-American events
with foreigners in her essay “Toward a
Global Movement," published in April 2003 in Nation magazine.

Evans
was “present at the creation” of this subversive agenda. And now she sees her
savior in Barack – and Michelle – Obama.

Her official page
on Barack Obama’s campaign website states, “I am
impressed with his ideas and ideals and that he has an amazing wife and listens
to her.” Discussing Michelle Obama may be “low class” for her
detractors, but evidently it is a selling point to radicals like Jodie Evans.

Not Just Obama:
Code Pink’s Growing Influence in the Party
of Defeat

As David
Horowitz and I point out in our new book, Party of Defeat, this pathology extends
far beyond Barack Obama. The Hate America ideology Code Pink represents – once at-odds
with Democratic leaders like Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Sam Nunn, and the
young Al Gore – now represents the will of its McGovernite base. Increasingly,
when the Radical Left talks, the Democratic leadership listens – whether by
attending the Take Back America Conference, the Yearly Kos, or inviting
hate-spewing bloggers into the halls of power.

Code
Pink has not been left out of this arrangement – and an increasing
number of lawmakers are singing the group’s praises. Sen. Russ Feingold, declared:
“People try to marginalize them as being
‘left,’ But they serve as a reminder to (lawmakers) of the broader concern in
the country over the war.” Even one of the group’s targets, Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi, courted their support last month, saying, “Instead of
fighting us – which is your right to do – let’s all work together to end the
war and bring the troops home.” Rep.
Lyn Woolsey, a California radical Democrat and co-founder of the Progressive
Caucus, admitted, “If it weren't for Code Pink and groups like Code Pink,
we'd be a lot farther away from resolving the situation in Iraq.” And
according to CP (which stands for “Code Pink,” not “Communist Party”)
activists, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, signed the letter to get them into Fallujah
to exercise their jihadist philanthropy.

Similarly,
Code Pink activists know they have the Democratic Party’s ear (or other
appropriate part of the anatomy). Founding member Gael Murphy told the San Francisco Chronicle,“We've
gotten to a place now where Hillary and Obama are falling all over each other
to be the leading peace candidate.”

They
did, indeed, court the radical Left – even as the media lauded
them for standing up to it – and this has led them to turn their backs on a war
they supported, and to seek the defeat of the soldiers they put into harm’s way.
As Jodie Evans smiles.

Show Me the
Money…Being Returned

Barack Obama now
faces a question, not of experience, ideology, or judgment, but of decency. Will he return the money raised
by someone so self-evidently opposed, not merely to victory in Iraq (they have
that in common), but to our soldiers themselves? Anyone seeking to be a
credible commander-in-chief of those forces, anyone deserving of their respect
and sacrifice, must return her funds, renounce her organization, and refuse any
support Code Pink might seek to offer his campaign.

Yet while he has
been prompt to throw other longtime associates under a bus when problematic
statements crop up, he has not yet lifted a finger in regards to Jodie Evans. Perhaps
this is because, unlike Jeremiah Wright, Otis Moss, Michael Pfleger, or Jim Johnson,
Evans offered more than rhetorical support.

Compare his
reticence against the Texas Republican Party. The Lone Star GOP recently divested
itself of $1,500, because it came from a vendor who sold a racist button
asking, “If Obama is president ...will we still call
it The White House?” Texas Republicans swiftly donated the money to a
charity benefiting Midwestern flood victims. Party
spokesman Hans Klingler told AP: “This vendor need not apply to another Texas
GOP state convention. We will neither tolerate nor profit from bigotry.”

Shouldn’t Barack
Obama make the same pledge about hatemongers who justify 9/11?

ENDNOTES:

1. Evans also said
she had donated to Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, and Ron Paul. This bipartisan
(or, if you count Paul’s Libertarian background, tripartisan) coalition should also return these funds and any others
she generated or delivered.

2. You can listen to the entire interview
in the program’s audio
archives, or watch relevant clips here
and here.

3. A sanitized version of
this statement now appears on the Code Pink website.

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